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Thursday, April 22, 2010

The Caesar of Leisure Part II

Welcome back friends to Part II of my blog “The Caesar of Leisure” Last time I talked a little bit our obsession with leisure and how it was robbing us of time we could be spending at the feet of our Lord and Savior and time that could be spent with our loved ones in fellowship. This week I will be talking a little bit about some more aspects of leisure that we have to keep checked. One of the biggest trends we see in our culture that even encompasses TV and internet is Busyness. We are always busy doing something and with the invention of the Internet and Television we stay busier than ever. One thing that keeps us way too busy as parents is the false ideal our culture promotes about keeping our children involved in a lot of organized activities. We as a culture are so obsessed with getting our children involved in more activities and events then we have time for. Now again these things are all good but when we try to do too much or feel we have to get our children involved in every activity out there we have the tendency to let these activities dictate our schedules, and I feel we, as well as our children suffer from it.

Trevin Wax writes in “Holy Subversion “Parents taxi children from one event to another, focusing all their leisure time on dance classes, organized soccer, Little League, or music lessons. Many times the children are as unhappy with their hurried lifestyle as the parents, and if given a choice, would simply want to go home”

Does this sound like your family? I know sometimes my schedule can be kind of hectic. So what’s the take away? Well I think we need to prioritize or lives and put some of these activities on the back burner. You should ask yourself how these activities are going to interfere with going to church. How will they fit into family time? How will they fit into personal time? Again these are just observations but it’s something you see all the time. Remember a Christians life should be grounded in the Cross not leisure!

I believe the way to accomplish this is to structure your free time. We need to prioritize our leisure activities so that it’s clear that Jesus is on the throne of our lives. We should make time for daily bible studies and prayer; we should share meals together instead of going our separate ways to go finish watching a TV show. We also need to plan moments of contemplative solitude. Trevin Wax writes “The constant barrage of noise and entertainment today can effectively drown out the voice of God to us, so that even when we open the scriptures, we are too distracted to hear what God has to say.” Trevin also writes “A spiritual discipline that keeps my life centered on Christ is the practice of praying briefly three or four times a day at certain hours.” These are just a few ideals to help us get our focus back on the Kingdom and not on things of this world. How do you spend your free time? I know I waste too much time! God Bless..